SoTW 17: Chano Dominguez, 'Tangos del Fuego' (Red Sea Jazz Festival)

This week's SoTW is by Chano Dominguez, a Spanish jazz pianist (b. 1960) who's carved a successful career of fusing a modern jazz sensibility with traditional flamenco music (palos), dance (baile) and song (cante).

Unfortunately, I can't even spell Andalusian without peeking, and I know virtually nothing about flamenco or Chano, so you're not going to learn anything of substance about him here.

But I spent last week at the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eilat, four long warm summer nights of immersion in live music at the lovely port venue. Chano was hands-down Best in Show there, so I'll just have to try to say a few words about him without embarrassing myself or misleading you.

The two acts which outshone all the others for me and many others were Paquito D'Rivera, a wily old Cuban saxophonist who played with Dizzy Gillespie for years, and put on a great show of sophisticated, fun, intelligent, Latin-infused jazz of the Afro-Cuban flavor. And Chano did the same on the next night with his New Flamenco Jazz.

Scott Yanow of All Music Guide (a site I virtually reside in and heartily recommend) writes, "Of all the post-swing styles, Latin Jazz has been the most consistently popular… The emphasis on percussion and Cuban rhythms make the style quite danceable and accessible. The style has not changed much during the past 40 years but it still communicates to today's listeners." I have been making an effort to educate myself in all sorts of Brazilian music in recent years, but Afro-Cuban is still pretty much off my radar, infectious though it may be.

Chano began most pieces with a lovely, lyric, Bill Evans-influenced piano solo that absolutely charmed and captivated me. Then the bass and drum joined in behind him, and it all began to swing. And then, slipping in unobtrusively were the hand-clappers—three guys sitting next to each other opposite the piano: a singer, a dancer, and a percussionist playing on the box he was sitting on. Crazy, wild rhythms, complementing and enhancing the lovely American-informed jazz coming from the piano. Then the whole business got Latin. The singer (who looked like a Columbian drug soldier, you can see him in the clip) sang in what I assume is traditional cante style. The dancer (who looked like a bantamweight gay waiter in a seedy restaurant in the port of Valencia) danced what I assume was traditional baile. It was all quite intoxicating. Made the whole trip to Eilat worthwhile.

I couldn't find anything among the 9 CDs of Chano's that I've accumulated which really reflects the music we heard. Attached is the closest I could find, 'Tangos del fuego', from the CD "New Flamenco Sound". And here's a clip (Oye Cómo Viene) made in a studio which gives you a bit of a visual picture of a tamed-down version of what was going on at 3 AM in the Eilat port. It will give you some taste of the music and the sprit, but to be honest, the live music really was–alive.

I have very little experience listening to live jazz. I live in a place where it's about as common as Martian field hockey, and I'm a snob to boot. I don't like sharing my musical experiences with anyone other than my headphones (see SoTW 14 on my experiences at the Woodstock festival, for those of you who read Hebrew). But what the heck, a chance to hang with my buddy Mike for four days and see some bands, what could be bad?

To be true to my effetist, kvetching roots, I'll tell you what could be bad. The hotel was from hell (30,000 children, a guest bashing the maitre d' over the head with a broomstick). The selection of kosher restaurants in Eilat rivals that in Dnipropetrovsk, and most don't open till 8 PM (the festival goes from 8 in the evening till 3 in the morning). The best music was at the jam sessions from 3 to 6 AM (I don't know about you, but decades of conditioning have trained me to provide for a basic need other than listening to music at that hour). The seats were made out of special industrial-hardened plastic. The bathrooms at the site weren't fit for swine. And almost none of the music was really first-rate.

Marina Maximilian was immature and unfocused, but was conducting admirable experiments in open vocal jazz. Dee Dee Bridgewater and Robin McKelle were polished. The crowd loved Danny Sanderson and John Scofield. HaBanot Nehama were received very warmly. (You'll note that I didn't include myself in any of the above.) Eli Degibri and Dafnis Prieto provided some real, challenging, mainstream jazz (a surprisingly small minority of the music presented). Rob Ickes is a fine bluegrass dobro player, just now learning the language of jazz, but I did enjoy both his concert and master class. We heard another really fascinating class with drummer Billy Hart, who's made 600 CDs with all the greats of our time.

But in spite of all, I really did have a fine time. It's great to get away with a friend of the male persuasion (bromance, in today's jargon), the hotel room was fine, and all that professional, live music in a really simpatico atmosphere is a trip. Going through the list of performers, I find myself being pretty critical of almost all of them. But the sum really was greater than the parts. I wasn't able to make the trip last year, missing one of my recent discoveries, bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding, as well as one of my very favorite artists, the incredible vocal artist Kurt Elling. Don't know who'll be there next year, but I sure hope it will include me, waiting up all night, looking for that elusive musical grail.

SoTW 16: Bob Dylan, 'Percy's Song'

A real good thing happened to a real good friend this week. Neal Hendel was appointed to the Supreme Court here in Israel. It's a little hard for me to digest. I don't know a lot about the judging business, but I have an awful lot of respect for his judgment about things like morality and right and wrong, and the subtle modalities thereof.

I trust him a little bit less on things musical. On the one hand, he does have some seriously quirky tastes (Whitney Houston's high notes, Aaron Neville glissandos, and I've forgotten a few of the more extreme aberrations and blocked out some others), but he can also pick up on some really fine things as well. He's a big Bob Dylan fan. So big that he chose to walk down the aisle to 'I Shall Be Released', Dylan's masterpiece about escaping the pain of the world. Well, he married a lovely woman, so I guess he knew what he was doing.

In his honor, I would have loved to talk about Dylan's newest CD, a collection of Yuletide songs entitled "Christmas in the Heart", but it won't be released till mid-October, so we'll all have to just bide our time till then. So I figured this would at least be an opportunity to pay a visit to one of Dylan's central recurrent metaphors: judges.

It seems Bob has a bit of a fixation on them. They appear directly in almost 30 of his songs ('Angelina', 'The Ballad of Donald White', 'Bob Dylan's Blues', 'Brownsville Girl', 'Day of the Locusts', 'Delia', 'Drifter's Escape', 'Frankie and Albert', 'High Water', 'Hurricane', 'I Wanna Be Your Lover', 'It's Alright Ma I'm Only Bleeding', 'Jim Jones', 'Joey', 'Jokerman', 'Lily, Rosemary and The Jack Of Hearts', 'Little Sadie', 'Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine', 'Nettie Moore', 'No Time To Think', 'Percy's Song', 'Ring Them Bells', 'Seven Curses', 'Shake Shake Mama', 'She's Your Lover Now', 'The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll'), not to mention the various judgment days, the "don't you judge me and I won't judge you"s, and the involvement with justice and the breach thereof, sin, the impingement of civil and emotional freedoms, and moral accountability.

Bob's not a big fan of judges. He usually portrays them as symbols of all that's heartless and fossilized in our society. Our SoTW is an atypical example of that motif. 'Percy's Song' is from 1963 or 1964, the same period and very much the same place as a SoTW from a few weeks ago, 'I'll Keep It with Mine'. Neither was released on an official album at the time. And both are unusual in approaching some very harsh pain in a most gentle manner. 'Percy's Song' makes me think a lot of 'Blowing in the Wind'—all about the indignation of social injustice, but without the strident soapboxing that so often characterizes–I cringe as I write the word–'protest songs'. In a 1965 interview, Dylan was asked if he thought writing 'finger-pointing' songs was superficial. "No, it's not superficial, it's just motivated. Motivated. Uncontrollable motivation. Which anyone can do, once they get uncontrollably motivated."

I think those are very, very wise words. I've thought about them often, quoted them, ever since back then when I read them. Words that early Bob should have listened to more often. 'Hattie Carroll', 'Seven Curses' and 'Donald White' (pre-1964) have certainly lost control. Not to mention 'Joey' and 'Hurricane' (1976). But Percy's Song is a protest song of a different level. It masterfully avoids moral simplification, much more successfully I think than 'Blowing in the Wind'.

The persona's friend caused the death of 4 people in a traffic accident. The driver's friend says to the judge, "He's got a sentence to serve…, but ninety-nine years he just don't deserve… What happened to him could happen to anyone." Usually the Dylan persona would let loose a strident harangue at the cold-hearted judge. But the judge has closed the case, and the persona's only recourse is to play the pained, wistful refrain "Oh, the Cruel Rain and the Wind."

Well, it's true that Dylan paints judges as heartless and haughty. But let's keep in mind that the very fact that he harps on the point obsessively indicates how passionately he feels that such should not be the case. That the ultimate just judgment is what Godliness is all about, and that a judge having people's fate in his hands is the closest to that that human society comes.

Just a year after writing all those songs about judgment, Dylan stepped back and wrote the memorable line "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Well, neither Neal nor I are so young anymore. We may still feel like denizens of the '60s in some corner of our soul, but the fact is that somewhere along the way, while we weren't looking, we've become adults. Well, Neal has, anyway. And I can't help feeling that if Bob knew Neal and saw him sitting up there on the highest bench in the land, he'd chuckle to himself with no small degree of satisfaction that someone who howled along with "How does it fee-eel?" has grown up and grown into a place where he can actually effect the times a‑changing for the better.

SoTW 15: Tracy Nelson (Mother Earth), 'Down So Long'

My friend Avi knows more about a whole range of subjects than your average person – computer graphics, carpentry terminology, and the mechanics of assault rifles, among a whole myriad of others. And music, he does know a whole lot about music. When I have a question about a concept ('Was Van Gogh really that good?') or a phrase ('Whaddaya call it when you can't take your eyes off an accident'), Avi's the guy I call. He's so taciturn he makes Gary Cooper sound like my neighbor Ethel. And so laid-back you sometimes think he's sleeping through your question. A crooked eyebrow is his version of nuclear retaliation.

So you can imagine my surprise when I got an outraged email from him, ranting that I had the audacity to call Sandy Dennis a British Judy Collins (see SoTW 8). So we batted that around a while, finally achieving violent agreement that another long-haired white chick singer from the same period, much more obscure than those two, puts them both in the back pocket of her jeans.

We're talking about Tracy Nelson, singer/pianist of the fine, underrated, unpigeonholeable country/rock/blues band Mother Earth. Think of The Band (organic, mature, deep musical roots) in San Francisco, late 1960s, opening shows at the Fillmore West for Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. Janis had a heart the size of the SF Bay, or she never would have agreed to follow Tracy.

Ms. Nelson has had an on-again/off-again career since Mother Earth, recording over a dozen solo albums and collaborations over the years, with some degree of commercial success, although she apparently has never been very comfortable in the music business.

I had the good fortune to hear Mother Earth in about 1969 in a club where I was working in Cincinnati. Boz Scaggs was playing with them. As far as I can remember, it was the only live performance I've ever seen that actually brought me to tears, just from the sheer beauty of the music.

Here's Tracy Nelson's masterpiece. She wrote it, she plays it, she sings it. And some of us will never, ever forget it. 'Down So Long'.

SoTW 14: Woodstock, the event (Hebrew); Joni Mitchell, 'Woodstock' (in English)

Dear SoTW Fans,
For those non-Hebrew readers amongst you, I sincerely apologize for this week's offering arriving in unintelligible gibberish. It just popped out that way, sorry, it won't happen again. Probably.
A short summary:
40 years ago the Woodstock festival took place in upstate New York. I was there. I got wet and muddy and cranky and went back home after one night to listen to some of the same artists on my headphones.
Have a hygienic week,
Jeff

הימים הטובים לפני ואחרי וודסטוק

מי הוא בכלל שיכתוב על וודסטוק? ראה את הגרסה הקצרה של הסרט פעם אחת, וגם זה לפני שלושים שנה, שלא לדבר על גרסת הבמאי או האאוט-טייקס. לא שמע את הפסקול מההתחלה עד הסוף פעם אחת, שלא לדבר על 2# או הקופסא. זה מומחה זה? היה בוודסטוק 79'? לא. היה בוודסטוק 89'? לא. גם לא ב-94', לא ב-99', לא ב-2009. אז מה הוא חושב את עצמו? כולה היה בארוע המקורי.

זה התחיל למעשה שבוע לפני שיצאנו למסע שלנו, חודש לפני הפסטיבל. ביל ואני החלטנו שעושים סיבוב בקיץ, מאוהיו לטנסי, לחפש איזו בחורה שהיתה בבית של סבתא שלה ושלא ענתה לטלפונים ממני, דרך איזה פולק פסטיבל איפה שביל רצה לראות רקדנים מן האפלייצ'יאנס שקופצים על במת עץ בנעלי עץ כבדות (איזו אומנות!), דרך הבית של אמו באטלנטה, דרך הסבים שלי בניו ג'רסי, דרך ניו יורק (שהצטיירה לנו בעיקר כזו מהסרט החדש של דאסטין הופמן, ההוא מ"הבוגר", "קאובוי של חצות"), לבית אביו בפיטסבורג ובחזרה. סיבוב גדול, כמעט חודש. ניסע במוסטנג הבורדו החדשה שלו, כי לבעלה של אמו של ביל היה קצת כסף, שיא הסטייל.

ביל ואני היינו צוות מדור הבידור של עיתון האוניברסיטה, שיצא לאור פעמיים בשבוע, בתפוצה של 26,000 עותקים. יכולנו לכתוב כמה שרצינו, על מה שרצינו, אף אחד לא פיקח עלינו. פעם פירסמתי בו ראיון פיקטיבי עם מתופף של להקה מאוד זניחה שהיה מאוד דומה לי בתמונה. כל ממסד הבידור בעיר חיזר אחרינו, כי 26,000 סטודנטים זה הרבה כסף. תקליטים קיבלתי חינם, בהתחלה כל הזבל שיצא כל שבוע, יותר מאוחר נתנו לי לבחור גם מהקטלוג. התחנפו אלי. כל אומן או להקה שהיו מגיעים לעיר—כרטיסים בשורה ששית באמצע, וראיון בארבע עיניים. כך פגשתי את ג'ניס, את זאפה, סיימון וגרפונקל, ועוד רבים. בחור בן 20, עצלן, בקושי לומד, לא עושה כלום עם החיים שלו חוץ מאשר לשכב במיטה הכפולה שלו בעיניים עצומות, לעשן, ולשמוע מוסיקה באוזניות טובות. ימים טובים.

ואז ראיתי בעיתון החדש, 'רולינג סטון', פרסומת של פסטיבל מוסיקת רוק, עם רשימה די ארוכה של משתתפים, באפסטייט ניו יורק.

כדי להסביר את החוויה שלי בוודסטוק (כן, אני מבטיח להגיע לזה בהמשך), אני צריך קודם להסביר את הראש המוסיקאלי שלי. הייתי מאוד מפונק. אליטיסט. בררן די טרחני (בעצם, עד היום). אני לא זוכר מי היו האומנים שפורסם כי ישתתפו (הרשימה השתנתה בין יולי למציאות), אבל רובם לא עניינו אותי. לא מעט כבר ראיתי, ועוד יותר הייתי סנוב מדי מכדי לחצות את הכביש כדי לשמוע אותם. (זה הגיע לשיאו כשדחיתי הזמנה לראיין את ה-מי בסיבוב הופעות הראשון של 'טומי'. מה זה סנוב.) מי שעניין אותי ממש היו קרוסבי סטילס ונאש (בלי ניל יאנג), הלהקה (The Band), ג'ון סבסטיאן. אולי גם קאנטרי ג'ו והארפליין, בתנאי שינגנו מוסיקה ולא ישמיעו סתם עננים של טריפ ולא בולשיט פוליטי. לא יותר מזה. אבל גם זה לא מעט. ובטח יהיו שם קטעים. אז זה נכנס לתוכנית המסע המסתורי הגדול שלנו.

וביל כתב על סרטים בעיתון. כרטיסי חינם למה שרצינו מתי שרצינו. ימים טובים, כמו שאמרתי. והיה אז דבר כזה "sneak preview", הקרנה תרום בכורה, רק שלא ידעת מה אתה הולך לראות. עניין של מזל. אז ערב אחד, בערך שבוע לפני הנסיעה, הלכנו לסרט כזה.

אנחנו מדברים על אמצע הקיץ, 1969. מלחמת ויאטנם בעיצומה. גם ההתנגדות לה הולכת וצוברת תאוצה. אבל אז, בעיר המאוד שמרנית בה למדנו, ה'פטריוטיזם' שלט. היה לא מקובל להתבטא נגד הממשל. נחשב לחתרנות. שיער ארוך, מחוץ איזור הקמפוס, משך מבטים עוינים במופגן. אני זוכר מאוד ברור סטיקר על מכוניות: "America, Love It or Leave It". היתה תחושה של מתח באויר, מתח שכבר הוביל לרצח בובי קנדי, רצח קינג, המכות ליד ועידת המפלגה הדמוקרטית בשיקגו, רצח שלושת "רוכבי החירות" במיסיסיפי ועוד ועוד. היו מכנים אותנו בלשון קצת יותר חריפה מאשר "אלו לא בחורים נחמדים". 90% מן העם שנא אותנו על עצם שיערנו הארוך.

אז הלכנו לסרט, שבוע לפני הנסיעה לקנטאקי וטנסי וג'ורג'יה. סרט עם מוסיקה יפה, הבירדס שרים שיר יפה של קרול קינג, "Wasn't Born to Follow". על שני בחורים נחמדים שנוסעים באופנועים שלהם ועושים קצת סמים, ופוגשים אנשים, אנשים שמחפשים קצת אוויר. ואז בא סוף הסרט, כשאיזה רדנק מחליט ככה סתם להוריד אותם מהכביש עם רובה הצייד שלו. וככה הסרט הסתיים, ובקושי הצלחנו ללכת אל המוסטנג. הברכיים רעדו. ממש.

אבל היות שידענו שלנו זה לא יקרה, והיות שהסרט עוד לא פורסם וההורים שלי לא ידעו עליו, יצאנו לדרך. ניסינו להאמין שלוחות הרישוי ממדינת ג'ורג'יה על המוסטנג יספקו לנו הגנה כלשהי.

לא מצאנו את הבחורה בטנסי, וגם לא את פסטיבל נעלי העץ. היו קטעים באטלנטה. היו קטעים מסוג אחר במקדונלדס אחד בג'ורג'יה הכפרית, כשנכנסנו עם השיער שלנו וזכינו למבטים שלא נעים להזכר בהם גם היום. ואצל סבתא שלי היה סבבה. כמנהגה, ציידה אותנו בקופסת נעליים צהובה מלאה בשני קילוגרמים מהשטרודל האלוהי שלה (שהייתי נותן הרבה בשביל ביס אחד ממנו היום, ושעוד יצוץ בסיפור הזה). והלאה לניו יורק. מה אני זוכר משם? שהשתתפנו בהפגנה בוילג' מבלי לדעת מה תוכנה, ונגד מי או מה אנחנו מפגינים, ושקניתי עניבה בצורת דגל אמריקה, שהיתה דבר כל כך פרובוקטיבי באותם ימים, גובל בעבירה פלילית לענוב אותה (אני לא מגזים כאן), שעברו כמה חודשים טובים עד שהעזתי לצאת איתה החוצה אפילו לקמפוס. והיינו בין הכמה אלפי אנשים הבודדים שקנו כרטיסים לפסטיבל הקרב ובא. (לו רק שמרתי אותם. בטח באיביי הייתי עושה היום קופה) יום ששי בבוקר, מוקדם ב-15 לאוגוסט, נסענו צפונה במוסטנג הבורדו של ביל.

בדרך, כבר שמענו ברדיו (המאוד, מאוד ממסדי) על תנועה כבדה, פקקים, בלגנים בכבישים המובילים למקום. כשהתקרבנו, כבר בכבישים דו-מסלוליים שהחלו להחנק, החלטנו לזרוק את מעט הגראס שהיה לנו, מחשש ממחסומים של המשטרה. בכל דיינר שעצרנו בו לקנות משהו לאכול, ראינו על דלתות השירותים שלטי 'לא בשימוש'. שאלנו בנימוס אם אולי בכל זאת. אך לשווא. וראינו הרבה, הרבה מגודלי שיער שנסעו באותו כיוון.

בסביבות הצהריים, הגענו לקצה הפקק, אולי 10 קילומטר מהאתר. צירפנו את המוסטנג לתור המכוניות שחנו לצד הדרך הצרה, והתחלנו ללכת.

שטחים פתוחים, פסטוראליים. שקט. אני זוכר הרבה מאוד שקט. קצת מכוניות עוברות בזחילה, אנשים יושבים על מכסה המנוע והבגאז', שום צפירה. שום רעש. הרבה עיניים בוהות. חיוכים קצת נבוכים מהמראה הדמיוני שהולך ונרקם. שקט של יראת כבוד. רק שפשוף של הרבה זוגות רגליים הולכות ב-country road הזה, אנשים שבאו מוויסקונסין ומיסורי וורג'ניה ואוהיו, כל אחד מהמקום הבודד שלו, אנשים דחויים, שמגלים בזה הרגע עשרות אחים אבודים. לא, מאות. לא, אלפים. לא, עשרות אלפים. לא, חצי מליון. כאפיקים בנגב, פריקים, יצורים שנואים, מגלים שהם חלק מאומה. ריצ'ארד ניקסון לא יאהב את זה.

וכאן, אם אתם רוצים, זה הזמן לשים את השיר "וודסטוק" של ג'וני מיטשל. פסנתר חשמלי בודד רוטט:

I came upon a child of God,
He was walking along the road.
And I asked him, 'Where are you going?'
And this he told me:
'I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm,
I'm going to join in a rock 'n roll band.
I'm going to camp out on the land,
I'm going to try and get my soul free.'

הלכנו שעה, שעתיים. וזה היה כאילו ללכת את דרך הכניסה לארץ לעולם לא, לגן עדן, למדינת החופש. שקע גדול, אמפי טבעי, מול במה גדולה. וים של אחים שלא היה לנו מושג על קיומם. הסתובבנו, הסתכלנו כולנו על כולנו. והכל שקט. חיוכים, אולי קצת תופים מאולתרים ושירה וריקוד. המון המום. לא צלילי הדממה, אלא סימפוניה של שקט. רצינו להשתין, הלכנו חצי שעה עד שמצאנו פינה. היינו רעבים, ולא היה מה לקנות. חזרנו לאוטו, וחזרנו איתו לתחום הפסטיבל, ממש קרוב לאיזור הבמה. כבר התחיל להחשיך, כבר הגשם התחיל לרדת. מהמוסיקה, אני לא זוכר הרבה. The Incredible String Band המשעממת. מלאני המיותרת. אבל למי היה אכפת. עוד גשם. ארלו גת'רי האהוב רצה להופיע, אבל הגשם התחזק. אני זוכר קריאות של "ארלו יעצור את הגשם!" נדמה לי שאני הייתי בין הקוראים את אותה קריאה.

פגשתי בחורה בטריפ רע, ולקחתי אותה לאוהל בו ה-Merry Pranksters של קן קיזי טיפלו באנשים. גשם, בוץ. אנשים שרים ורוקדים, בלי הרבה בגדים או מעצורים (גם בנות), מעשנים קצת. ג'ון באאז המעצבנת. באיזשהו שלב חזרנו לאוטו. כל מה שהיה לנו לאכול היה השטרודל של סבתא, עם הרבה ריבה ואגוזים ותפוחי עץ. אכלנו כמה שיכולנו (טעים לאללה, ואבל כמה אפשר?) וחילקנו את השאר לכמה מאחינו החדשים. הגשם התחזק. בוץ על כל הגוף. אין איפה להשתין. אוכל לא נראה באופק. נכנסים למוסטנג לנסות לישון. ביל הגוץ לא הצליח. אני מטר שמונים ושלוש. ניסינו להכנס מתחת למוסטנג. ניסיתם פעם לישון מתחת למוסטנג? בחמש או שש, כשהאור הבקיע, חלמתי לעצמי על מערכת הסטריאו שלי בחדר, ועל עבודת האולפן הנפלא שעשו קרוסבי, סטילס ונאש, על טוהר הצליל באוזניות ה-Shure שלי. וחשבתי כמה חבל לקלקל את קסם הצלילים האלו במציאות המטרולוגית הגשמית הזאת. וחשבתי על אדמת החווה של מקס יסגור מעורבת בגשם של הקב"ה, בתערובת בוץ נוזלי בתוך האוזן שלי ביום אגדי זה. וביל פקח עין אחת, לאט. הבטנו זה על זה. בו זמנית הנהנו קלות—נכנסנו לאוטו, ונסענו.

אז מה לקחתי משם (חוץ משכבות הבוץ)? קודם כל הזכות להשוויץ שהייתי שם. וחוויה שבטית. תחושה של חברות באומה שתוך שנה, בעקבות מאורעות קנט סטייט, נטשתי לטובת זהות לגמרי אחרת, והשתייכות לאומה אחרת. את המוסיקה אני עדיין שומע מדי פעם, אבל בגרסה ההיגיינית יותר, זו של האולפן. כי רוב האומנים שעניינו אותי היו אמני אולפן. ואפילו אלו שלא, במיוחד ג'ניס ג'ופלין והגרייטפול דד, שמעתי לאחר מכן בתנאים סניטריים ואקוסטיים אופטימאליים יותר. מצטער שהלכתי אחרי יום? כן. לא זכיתי אף פעם לראות את הלהקה, לא את קרוסבי סטילס ונאש, גם לא את סבסטיאן כסולן. על כל האחרים, גם בדיעבד אני מוותר.

איך כתב שנתיים לפני כן זמר אחד שבכלל נשאר בביתו בזמן הפסטיבל, למרות שהיה גר כמעט בטווח הליכה?

"And just how far would you like to go in?"

"Not too far but just far enough so's we can say that we've been there."

Point of order: Joni Mitchell wasn't at Woodstock. She couldn't get in. She wrote the song 'Woodstock' afterwards, put it on her "Ladies of the Canyon" album. Her 'very good friends' CSN&Y had a big hit with it, which was used in the soundtrack of the movie.

SoTW 13: Tim Hardin, 'Black Sheep Boy'

My son is about to go away for a long time, and I'm trying hard to be philosophical about it. He's gone away before for long periods, and has always come back, and I sure wish him Godspeed. And I have this one song running through my mind.

Remember how in high school a big part of dating was having an 'Our Song'? Paul Anka probably holds the record for having welded and melded and subsequently consoled more couples than anyone else. Perhaps the Platters are in second place. Percy Faith's "Theme to A Summer Place" is no slouch, either.

Well, I'm not talking about 'Our Song' in that sense. My relationship with my son is far too long, deep, complex, rich to be crystallized in one song.

But there is this one song that somehow typifies in my mind a certain special facet of his biography. Or perhaps we should call it a refrain, or a recurrent theme. Well, he's not in that place anymore. He's a different person, leading a different life, traveling now to different places for different reasons. But the song still sticks with me. It's a bittersweet coming home song, not a going away one, but I suppose somehow there's a mirror imagery at work here.

Tim Hardin has perhaps the finest career I know of based on the fewest accomplishments. Two significant LPs in his mid-20s, a drug-ruined mess by 30, dead at 39, far fewer than a dozen great songs. But there is that handful of great songs that are so incontestably fine, beautiful gems, that he earned himself a place in the rock pantheon way before he started burning himself out. Misty Roses, If I Were A Carpenter, Reason To Believe, How Can We Hang On to a Dream?, and our SoTW, 'Black Sheep Boy'. His songs are AM-length, barely two minutes long. But he managed to do more in two minutes than many others did in decades of writing and recording.

In addition to creating this handful of precious songs, Tim Hardin also occupies a niche of honor in the history of rock. He was in fact one of the real germinal innovators of the folk-rock sound, a sound palette on which artists are still recording today. We always think of Simon and Garfunkle's 'Sounds of Silence' and The Byrds' 'Mr Tambourine Man', but listen to how much more successfully integrated the drums and bass and piano and even modest string section are in Hardin's two significant albums, circa 1966. So thanks for that contribution, Tim. It may seem modest, but I sure give you your share of the credit. But of course, that's not why we remember him. It's the songs.

Each song is a paragon of honesty and restraint. Beautiful and precious, but without a millitrace of the maudlin. I guess it was hard to be so honest.

Our song, 'Black Sheep Boy', is only two brief verses long. It starts like this:

Here I am back home again, I'm here to rest.
All they ask is where I've been, knowing I've been west.

Well, son, go knock 'em dead, and come back when the time is right. No questions asked.

SoTW 12: Arvo Pärt, 'Cantate Domino'

I don't consider myself to be a very spiritual person. I'm pretty cynical, and tend to hang out in the here and now. When pressed, I define myself as 'observant', rather than 'religious'. But I've been listening for the last couple of weeks to the contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Which means it's been a pretty serene couple of weeks.

Pärt was born in Estonia in 1935, composed furiously in the tonally severe vein of Bartok, then in the serialist mode of Schoenberg, which got him into a heap of trouble with the Soviets, then he stopped composing completely for about a decade, working as a radio engineer. And then he was reborn musically in the early 1970s, heavily influenced by Gregorian and Medieval and Renaissance liturgical music, and apparently motivated by his own devout Russian Orthodox belief.

He emigrated from Estonia in 1980, ultimately settling in Berlin, where he still lives and composes. The piece attached here is Cantate Domino, Psalm 95, composed in 1977 and performed by Paul Hillier's Theatre of Voices. This piece is light, even playful. Typically, Pärt's music is more elevated, glorious, full of gravitas, gorgeous. I've known this CD for a number of years, but it recently started speaking to me in a certain quiet voice that's riveted my attention. I acquired thirteen more CDs over the course of a week (he's surprisingly popular, can be found in stores), and I'm working hard at broadening my appreciation for his work. Actually, I've listened to nothing else. That's deep immersion, even for me. But as I say, I'm feeling pretty serene.

He frequently employs a technique he calls 'tintinnabuli', a bell-like sustained triad. His music doesn't really move forward in the standard Western dramatic sense of tension and release, complications and resolutions. It's as thought he's not interested in getting anywhere, just in letting go and floating up into a rarer place. As if the music exists outside time, outside the turmoil of tempo, in peace and harmony. Utter simplicity, utter serenity. Much of his music is choral. He calls the voice "the most perfect instrument of all".

"Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers – in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises – and everything that is unimportant falls away. Tintinnabulation is like this. . . . The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation."

Well, thank heaven he usually writes music, not words, and thank heaven I mostly listen to him rather than talk about him.

Some people associate him with the 'minimalists', but hear quite a lot happening. I sure wouldn't call him any names at all. So let's check our cynicism at the gate, settle in and relax. Make sure there's no one about to disturb, and crank the speakers way up loud. Let them float, them tintinnabulous triads.

SoTW 11: The Idea of North, 'Fragile' (Sting)

"Art is a matter of taste." No one has the right to say what's 'good' and what's 'bad'. Everyone's entitled to his/her/its opinion.

Well, I guess I begrudgingly go along with the idea that everyone is entitled to vote. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone has a right to an opinion about music.

A goodly number of years ago I had an ongoing informal teaching relationship with a young man, let's call him Ohad. He was about 16 when we started, a bona fide musical genius, composer/keyboardist. I taught him everything I know about rock music. I mean, everything. The kid was a veritable sponge. We developed a private language, one which I think no one on the face of the globe could have followed. We later employed that empathy in developing music for a number of plays I wrote and directed.

He was no pushover in the opinion department, but we pretty much agreed on everything. I gave him album X, and he came back saying songs 2, 7 and 11 get a 9. The rest 7 and below. And he was right on. Precisely, Watson. Maybe we would quibble about half a point. But on the fundamental perception of the album, we were in violent agreement. That doesn't mean we shared the same opinions, the same likes and dislikes. One could have more affection for a certain artist, the other less, but we could always get what the other was hooking onto.

Why, you may ask yourself, is that so? I'll tell you why I think it's so. Because some musical works are empirically better than others. How do we empirically evaluate that? I have no idea, I just like using the word. Back in the very early 1960s, I was one of the very few people who bought LPs. Everyone was buying the hit 45s. But I achieved compulsion at a young age, and I wanted to make sure that 'Mr Blue' and 'Come Softly to Me' weren't the Fleetwoods' only gems, that God forbid I wasn't missing anything. And so often, those albums contained that one hit and 11 attendant 2'20" nonentities. Empirically.

How does that happen? What separates the wheat from the chaff? I dunno. I do know. You do. Heaven does. Newton, Einstein. It's just the way it is, don't blame me.

The one case where Ohad and I disagreed was Sting. I had nothing against him, especially "Dream of the Blue Turtles". But Ohad just cringed. What can I say? Ohad, if you're out there, I love you, but this song ain't for you.

It is for everyone else, though. It's by a great Australian a cappella quartet, The Idea of North. Listen to what four unembellished voices can do. I challenge anyone out there (except Ohad) to say that this ain't a really fine piece of music.

In case you were wondering, the group took their name from a concept coined by Canadian pianist and wacko Glenn Gould for an autobiographical film of that name, maintaining that 'North' is an idea as much as it is a physical region, that things can be mapped and measured for 'nordicity'. What a word, right? Well, TION (as the quartet nickname themselves) are from Australia, which is north of, um, of, um… They have some very lovely videos, in which they sing songs and for which the costume designers should be given a generous cash prize and a place in heaven.

'Fragile', like so many of Sting's songs, displays self-righteous bleeding-heart, we-are-the-world, brainless-pacifist sentiments and a very lovely melody. And TION's rendition is—well, you just listen and judge for yourself.

SoTW 10: Charles Mingus, 'Remember Rockefeller at Attica'

I said to myself, "Jeff, what about taking for the Song of The Week the #1 song from 50 years ago?"

And even though Johnny Horton's 'The Battle of New Orleans' (6 weeks at the top of the chart; I bought that 45—what in heaven's name were we thinking?) evokes a lot of personal memories about Wharton, NJ, and my grandparents' TV room, I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about the song. I thought of cheating, taking something a little before or after, but the pickings were still pretty slim. I just missed Wilbert Harrison's 'Kansas City' (2 weeks), and I sure could find a lot to say about the Leiber-Stoller team who wrote it, but I thought I'd do that around one of their more typical recordings. Before that was Dave (Baby) Cortez' 'Happy Organ' (1 week too many), and before that The Fleetwoods' 'Come Softly to Me' (4 weeks). I even have a video of that somewhere. I was a really big fan of The Fleetwoods, but don't have much to say there. Okay, Gary was in Navy. So? Let's see what we have in upcoming weeks: Paul Anka's 'Lonely Boy' (4)—no way, Jose; Elvis' 'A Big Hunk O' Love' (2)—sorry, I don't even know that, and I have no intention of going out to research Elvis' post-army popslop; The Browns' 'The Three Bells' (4)—why do I forget my mother's birthday but remember the words to that song?; Santo & Johnny's 'Sleep Walk' (2)—a great song, certainly, but I don't know anything about them; Bobby Darin's 'Mack the Knife' (9 weeks!—what were we thinking??—well, you can't blame me, I certainly didn't buy that one); dethroned by The Fleetwoods' 'Mr. Blue' for one short week. Well, I could talk about the injustice of that, because 'Mr. Blue' is one truly great song, but it didn't reach the peak till November 16, and that would be just too much of a chronoillogicality.

So I guess we're not going for any 50^th anniversary celebrations. But who said we need a round number? What's wrong with a 34 year, 5 month, 3 week anniversary? Because it was on December 28, 1974, that Charlie Mingus got his quintet into the NYC studio for the session that gave us our SoTW.

I rarely wake up without musical colors in my mind. The palette is rarely blank. Who knows where they come from—a dream about a flat tire? Aunt Sadie's impending visit? The peachiness of the peach in my cereal?

So putting on the first music of the day is usually less of a conscious decision than uncovering the music that's been lurking in my nethermind. But on occasion, there's a blank, and I get to actually choose what I want to hear. It doesn't happen that often, but it can be quite exhilarating. That's when you peer into that Pandora's box of The Opening Cut.

Opening cuts, you know? Those songs that look the room's silence right in the eye and say, 'Stand back man, watch this!' The first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth. George's first chord in 'Hard Day's Night'.

Well, one of my favorites is the opening cut of Mingus's "Changes One" (there's a second CD taken from the same sessions, but I'm not going to tell you its name, you're going to need to guess it), from the very end of his career.

So on those special occasions when I get to ask 'Whatcha gonna listen to, Jeff?', the sound that comes grinning into my ear is the rollicking opening riff of 'Remember Rockefeller at Attica', sweet, soulful, sophisticated, heartlifting. Who can resist smiling at this song, feeling that lilting tilt in your be-hind?

Charles Mingus is a bona fide tortured genius. He made great music in more styles than Imelda Marcos had shoes, from the early 50s to the mid-70s. His music was frequently probing and abrasive ('Haitian Fight Song', 'Fables of Faubus'), it could be heart-rending ('Self-Portrait in Three Colors', 'Reincarnation of a Lovebird', 'Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blue'), majestic ('The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife are Some Jive Ass Slippers'), knee-slapping ('Better Get Hit in Your Soul'), to this week's song, which is downright jolly.

He revolutionized his instrument, the bass, but earned his reputation equally as a composer and bandleader. He was politically engaged, an intellectual, a writer, an entrepreneur, an iconoclast, and an obstreperous sonofabitch (known to punch out bandmates on stage–and he was the size of a Steeler linebacker).

The song has a fifty-one-bar chorus consisting of forty-two bars' continuous melodic invention plus a repeat of the first nine bars. Don't worry, I didn't count them. I copied that out of a book. The book also says the song was originally titled 'Just for Laughs Saps'.

But it finally landed on 'Remember Rockefeller at Attica' which refers to Governor Nelson Rockefeller's order to the NY State Police to use force to quash the riot in the state penitentiary at Attica. Rockefeller had the reputation of being a nice guy. Mingus was known to be an irascible bully. Ten guards and nineteen prisoners died in the riot. The song is sweet and bouncy. Go figure.

SoTW 9: Barbra Streisand, 'Lover Come Back to Me'

This week I sent out an obit of Michael Jackson:
Michael Jackson died today at the age of 50 in La La Land. He left an indelible imprint on the world of music as an 11-year old imitator of James Brown's dance style, and as the cute little frontman for his siblings' Motown group, which had a few forgettable minor hits. Later in his career he converted to an obscure sect of Caucasian transracialists and became owner of the rights of much of the Beatles' catalog. He is survived by, among others, everyone reading this.
For some reason, it aggravated a few people on some sort of level I can't grasp. But I haven't succeeded in really offending anyone musically in a while, so here we go.

This week we're going to look at the tragically short career of one of the finest vocal stylists in the history of popular music.

Barbra Streisand was born in 1942, and earned a reputation as a "crazy" in high school, where she was friends with Neil Diamond and Bobby Fischer. At 18 she was already singing in night clubs, at 19 she was appearing regularly as a curiosity on The Tonight Show, at 20 she landed a 'small but star-making' role in a Broadway musical. She had recorded two Top 10 albums for Columbia before her 21^st birthday.

No one recognized it at the time, but she had contracted an artistically fatal disease.

She was born homely. Her mother told her she wasn't pretty enough to be an entertainer, and urged her to learn typing. Her young persona confronted that image directly—joking about her very large nose, her Brooklyn demeanor, her awkward deportment, her horrifying empire-waist dresses.

At 22 she left her nightclub career for the starring role in a smash Broadway musical hit. She played the role of a talented loser, became a megastar, and turned herself into a loser of a talent. The Broadway show launched her to the peak of her profession, perhaps the most successful singer/actress in the past couple of generations. From that point on, it has been a long slide down the slippery slope of inflated ego and glitz posing as guts.

Yawn. If you loved Yentl, please close this immediately and go watch it. If you think 'People' is a moving song, press real fast and go listen to it. In my very humble opinion, they're mawkish, embarrassing pablum.

In Funny Girl, she had a number, 'I'm the Greatest Star'. A tour de force of kosher ham. It's very funny–because it's ironic. Because she presents herself as the ugly duckling ludicrously pretending to be A Star. But within a very short time, she started coming on with the décolletage and poils and filmed through a misty haze–it ain't funny, girl.

If you're still here, I guess you're with me in that persecuted minority who wish The Queen would put on some clothes, cover her bodice, and stop trying to convince us that she's glamorous. She can consort with all the Ryan O'Neals and Robert Redfords in the world, and she's still going to be that liddle Yiddle from Flatbush. But I'll betcha there are very few among us here, the non-BS fans, the heretics, who have really given her a fair break as a serious artist.

Gasp. He called her an artist???

Yup. Her first two albums, "The Barbra Streisand Album" and "The Second Barbra Streisand Album," are as unpretentious as their titles. They come from that 1962 loft down in the Village, when she was married to Elliot Gould. The singing is genuinely ballsy, overflowing with young and innocent love for the world, whether it's newfound independence or the most purely broken heart a young girl could have. Her voice is the pure heady optimism of Kennedy-era optimism. The songs, many of them standards from the 1940s, are dead-on examples of the political and sexual awakening of the 1962 New Frontier – post-beatnik hip, cynical and funny, intense and emotionally committed. Her signature song was 'Happy Days Are Here Again', the theme song of FDR's 1932 campaign, eventually the buoyant and optimistic theme song of the Democratic Party. Except that Babs gives it a somber treatment, at a deliberate tempo, with harrowing, gut-wrenching commitment.

We've always known she had the greatest chops this side of La Scala before they were sacrificed on the altar of auto-adulation. She can still flit in one breath from a Gorgeous George Gorilla Press to the butterfly caress of a brain surgeon. But in these two albums she's funny and clever and impassioned, and, for me, utterly convincing. She moves me.

Then she became a star.

The song we're going to hear is Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II's standard 'Lover, Come Back to Me,' from the Ed Sullivan Show, December 1962, two months before the release of her first album, a year before the second. It's over the top, it's extravagantly demonstrative, and I love it.

The structure is standard, AABABA, with the verse culminating in some variant of the name of the song. Listen to just that, the imperative: "Lover, come back to me". She sings it four times. Follow how it grows from a polite request to an ardent plea to an unveiled threat to a cavewoman's club over the poor guy's noggin. And that grounch at the end, when she's dragging him back into the home cave by his hair. This ain't glitz. This is fine, inventive, honest vocal artistry. No worrying about at what angle the camera is going to catch her schnozz. Just her and that absentee lover.

She's 20 years old when she sings this.

It seems the ugly duckling is a whole lot more interesting than the swan.

SoTW 8: 'I'll Keep It With Mine', Fairport Convention (Bob Dylan)

Young Bob Dylan didn't often write gentle songs. Those addressed to a girl were usually angry, critical, upbraiding, if not down-right mean. Hate songs more than love songs. The one that pops to mind is, of course, 'Like a Rolling Stone', but you don't have to think hard to come up with a whole string of them through his golden period of the mid-60s: 'Don't Think Twice', the stunning 'One Too Many Mornings', 'I Don't Believe You' (She acts like we never have met), 'She Belongs to Me' (She's got everything she needs), to pick one from each of the masterpiece albums that preceded "Highway 61".

But there are, hidden here and there, chinks in the armor, fleeting glimpses of vulnerability. They're the soft underbelly of the list above – she did, after all, get to him. And there are a few songs in which the chip slips off his shoulder, his guard down, his sunglasses in his pocket, his heart open. The well-known 'Girl from the North Country', the wrenching, under-appreciated 'Boots of Spanish Leather', and this week's SoTW, 'I'll Keep It with Mine'.

'I'll Keep It with Mine' is notable for at least three reasons:

It's a fine song, and a relatively obscure one. (That's two reasons right there.) He never recorded it himself for an official album, just a piano bootleg that appeared years later on the (official) Dylan Bootlegs series. (Quick, name two other major non-love relationship songs from the same period that he didn't record officially! That's right – 'Love is Just a Four-Letter Word' and 'Baby, You've Been On My Mind', both taking a hilarious and cynical look at a male/female relationships.)

'I'll Keep It with Mine' is enigmatic and flawed. What the heck does the title mean? Why is he 'loving you not for what you are but for what you're not'? What isn't she? What's the subject of the song, anyway? Where the heck did the train engineer come from in the third verse?? But Dylan is Dylan, and somehow it all hangs together on a level I can't and don't care to try to 'explain'. Fact is, 45 years later I'm still rolling it around my brain and over my palate. As Dylan himself said recently on his Theme Time Radio Hour show with so much disarming charm, "You can never tell why someone's gonna stick something in a song. You just gotta remember that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. You can't expect to understand everything in every song."

Oh, right, there's a third reason to take a listen to this song. It's the only Dylan song I can think of from the 1960s that he misrecorded. Just flat out missed the point of the song. He bangs away at the piano and shouts the lyrics at way too fast a tempo. (Of course, ten years later he began several decades of rapid-fire shouting of what should have been whispered slowly). One of the several early cover versions our SoTW, though, came close to hitting it on the head, that of Fairport Convention.

They're a leading voice of the English folk movement transmogrifying towards rock in the mid-60s, along with Pentangle and John Martyn. Their lead singer is Sandy Denny, a British Judy Collins, and I sure like Richard Thompson's acoustic guitar leading a rock setting. Their treatment here really isn't anything spectacular, just a tastefully wistful, properly laid-back rendition of a lovely and puzzling song.

I guess when all the sound and fury and high-falutin' talk is over, what we're left with is one darn pretty song. And if anyone out there understands it, please let me know.

SoTW 7: John Coltrane and Johnny Hartmann, 'My One and Only Love'

Oh, am I excited!

A new CD was released last week by my favoritest 'singer' – "Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman". So I'm just popping with anticipation.

Kurt Elling is 42, from Chicago, and this is his 8^th CD in 14 years. It's a re-recording (with a few tasteful additions) of the 1963 classic "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman". Mr. Elling is an artist of amazing versatility, not just a singer. But he's also a great crooner, as this CD will undoubtedly prove–when I manage to get my hands on it, here in the wholly holey Holy Land. But in the meantime, let's revisit the source.

John Coltrane is a monumental figure in modern jazz. He started out as an untried, technically limited tenor saxophonist in Miles Davis' first quintet in the mid-50s. Eventually Miles had to throw him out of the band for drug abuse. Then he cut his chops for a while with Thelonious Monk and got himself off drugs. Then he rejoined Miles in the late 50s for the "Kind of Blue" period, then went solo. In 1961 he started moving towards spiritual, 'free' jazz, developing a commercially disastrous technique of "sheets of sound" and a lot of the most astounding music in jazz ever. To appease the record company, he recorded a couple of more palatable LPs, including an eponymous 1963 collaboration with balladeer Johnny Hartman.

Ballads are to Coltrane as political protest songs are to Dylan–they constitute the backbone of his popular reputation, while actually constituting a rather insignificant place in his corpus. In subsequent years, Trane's playing became so intense and his development as an artist so rapid that enthusiasts track his growth by the month, even by the week. He died in 1967 at the age of 40.

Johnny Hartman had a respectable though not brilliant career as a crooner contemporaneously with and then beyond Coltrane. His voice is so smooth it makes Billy Eckstine sound like Mick Jagger, Nat Cole like Joe Cocker. He recorded sporadically, and his acknowledged masterpiece is their joint venture, "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman". Only 30 minutes long, it's enough of a classic to warrant an homage by as fine an artist as Kurt Elling.

Of the six songs on the LP, each one a gem, I've chosen the lovely standard 'My One and Only Love'. The performance here is the epitome of elegance and warmth, yet intelligent and musically substantial. So lower the lights, put on your smoking jacket, take a brandy glass in your hand, and enjoy.

SoTW 6: Elvis Costello, 'Accidents Will Happen' (live)

I often find that when I get my hands on a new CD by an artist I'm familiar with, I put it on hold and listen to his/her previous work. Preparing myself aurally for the new one, as it were.

Well, mazal tov to Elvis Costello on his new release, "Secret, Profane and Sugarcane". The liner notes compare it to his 1986 opus magnum, "King of America", also produced by T-Bone Burnett. I've listened to the new CD twice now, and was a bit underwhelmed. The sound is similar, but it doesn't hang together. At least so far. But I'll probably be giving it one more chance.

Because I think Elvis Costello is as talented as John Lennon.

I realize that's a pretty outrageous statement. But no one who knows me musically would accuse me of anything less than the utmost reverence for John's work. I didn't say that Elvis is in John's league (because that's a league of one), I said that he has the talent. What he lacks is the focus. He started as one of the founders of punk, a genre for which I have little appreciation, and I think still suffers from that tendency to play the provocateur rather than focus on the music itself. He's worked in many, many different contexts, from Nashville to string quartets, Paul McCartney, opera, jazz, neo-punk, Burt Bacharach, and TV emceeing ('Spectacle', hosting the likes of James Taylor, Rufus Wainwright and the saxophonist/president Bill Clinton). Nothing wrong with that. Unless it comes at the expense of digging down, which might be true with Elvis C. To my mind his is a career chock full of disappointment, because of his immense talent and very small really first-rate output, stuff which can stand unflinchingly next to anything of its time – the LP "King of America", four or five songs from "Spike", the songs "Shipbuilding" and "Alison", and this week's song of the week, a live version of his punk hit "Accidents Will Happen."

The original I found to be just ordinary kid's stuff. And this naked version? A riveting combination of wryness and craftsmanship, poetry and passion.

And not only that. He's married to Diane Krall.

Accidents will happen, you only hit and run.
You used to be a victim, now you're not the only one.
Accidents will happen, you only hit and run.
I don't want to hear it, 'cause I know what I've done.

Oh I just don't know where to begin–
Though he says he'll wait forever, its now or never.
But they keep him hanging on – the silly champion.
She says she can't go home without a chaperone

There's so many fish in the sea that only rise up in the sweat and smoke like mercury,
And they keep you hanging on, they say you're so young
Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone

And its the damage that we do and never know.
It's the words that we don't say that scare me so

There's so many people to see,
So many people you can check up on and add to your collection
But they keep you hanging on until you're well hung.
Your mouth is made up but your mind is undone.

SoTW 5: Glenn Gould, Toccata in Cm (J.S. Bach)

After last week's visit to The Beach Boys, it's now the turn of another of the great B's, J.S. Bach, for a piece from a rather obscure work of his, the Toccatas for keyboard (BWV 910-916).

Most of Bach's works for solo instruments are composed of six units. These toccatas are seven, and they're not widely performed. Two good reasons why they're a favorite of mine. Oh, and the fact that they're so great.

(BTW, don't confuse these obscure keyboard toccatas with the famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 for organ, which some of you may know through Gשראי Hudson's expansive introduction to The Band's 'Chest Fever', especially in concert versions).



I always think of these toccatas as Old Jack Bach's jazz pieces, because of their very improvisatory feel, meandering from section to section, no rigorous structure. In the one we're featuring here, BWV 911 in C minor, he starts out with a doodle, then seems to find a bit of a melodic groove with a counterpoint, then seems to lose interest and return to his doodling, then a pause where he seems so be wondering what to do next. And then he rrrrrrrrips into a mad, take-no-prisoners fugue, one of the longest he ever wrote, 4 pages in the score. Then he starts to unwind it, slow it down. You think the race is over, and – boom, right back to the whirlwind. Then a playful, elegant elaboration, with the main theme alternating between minor and major. Right on, Johann.

Serious musicians enjoy arguing about whether to perform Jack's keyboard oeuvre on the clavichord or harpsichord (the keyboards of his day), or its well-tempered successor, the pianoforte, aka the piano.

I have a hard time getting all twisted up about that (gee, could that possibly mean that I'm not serious?). I go for the particular performance. And for me, almost every time, that's Glenn Gould.

In a Social Skills school, Gould would be placed in a class with Howard Hughes and Bobby Fischer. You might not want to go on a camping trip with him. Serious musicians (them again) have a lot of reservations about him—he hums along with his playing (okay, not a great attraction), and his interpretations are 'willful' (i.e., eccentric, off-the-wall, wacko). He doesn't adhere to the traditional tempi. Oy.

I have a problem with a lot of the performing arts, such as acting and classical music. So often, the performer performs the score—plays the notes, reads the lines—rather than portraying a living version of what underlies it. And it all goes right past my ear. I loved hearing John Barton, the legendary founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, say that he can rarely hear Shakespearean actors, that it's usually just 'words, words, words' that fly past him. What I (and I think he) need is 100%, full-time, total engagément. Play no note, speak no line, dance no step, until you understand why it has to be. That kind of intensity is crazy. That's why I listen to Glenn Gould.

And I find his performance here wild and wonderful, full of humor and passion and humanity, and I'm tickled to have the opportunity to share it with you.

SOTW 4: The Beach Boys, 'Kiss Me Baby'

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who get the Beach Boys and those who don't. By 'The Beach Boys', I don't mean Al Jardine and Mike Love and 'Surfin' Safari' or 'Be True to Your School'; I mean of course Brian Wilson, and the stunning music that he created before his mind went mush.

It's hard to sell the Beach Boys, even to people with good taste–there are lots of legitimate reasons to dismiss them: years of silly, pandering music (throughout their career); whiny, white-bread voices; the stupidest lyrics this side of Nashville.

But three gazillion fans can't be wrong, right? And TBB had a string of hits from 1962 to 1966 (and onwards) rivaled among American pop groups only by the Four Seasons and the Motown stable. Then in 1966, right on the heels of their tenth straight hit LP, "The Beach Boys Party! (Live)"–came their first commercial flop. It was called "Pet Sounds".

Go find a rock critic who doesn't rank it in the top five greatest rock albums. But what do rock critics know? Paul McCartney said he and John were so blown away by it that "Sgt Pepper" was made as a conscious attempt to go "Pet Sounds" one better.

Brian Wilson (my transcription from a taped interview): After the Beales her Pessounds, they wand make a greyr album, so they id Sharzhin Peppersh Lowly Harsh Cluband. And it was a very, very, very great album. Right up there with Pet Sounds, And it was, like, really good. Well, that was obviously well into mush-hood. I belong to the camp that believes that "Sgt Pepper" was 'overproduced and underwritten', whereas "Pet Sounds" is one of the most beautiful works of any genre or medium I know. Books and movies and podcasts and probably macramé patterns have been made in tribute to "The Making Of". So I'll let you explore that territory on your own.

What I'm offering up this week is a cut from "Beach Boys Today!", an album that riveted me back in 1965 when it was released, over a year before "Pet Sounds". Side One contains 4 hit singles (enough to ensure the commercial success of the album): the dumb-out 'Do You Wanna Dance', the brilliant pap 'Dance, Dance, Dance' and 'Help Me, Rhonda', and the audacious 'When I Grow Up'. But there are another seven songs in which Brian was creating music on an entirely new level of complexity, sophistication—and beauty. I feel a bit uncomfortable touting cuts with titles like 'Don't Hurt My Little Sister', 'I'm So Young', 'She Knows Me Too Well' (the last including the lyric 'When I look at other girls, it must kill her inside, but it'd be another story if she looked at the guys'). But listen to them. And to the masterpiece of the album, 'Please Let Me Wonder'. And to this week's song, 'Kiss Me, Baby'.

The song intrigued me in 1965, fascinated me for decades afterwards, and continues to haunt me today.

Try, please, I urge you, to filter out the cloying obstacles. I promise you, there are treasures within: unspeakably beautiful, angular, floating melody lines, an instrumental palette of colors and shades that offer deep, wondrous pleasures, and a symphonic tapestry of six or eight simultaneous musical lines bobbing and interweaving, stunning harmonies within the vocals, all of them playing off and with each other.



Several weeks ago I discovered the 58-CD series "The Beach Boys' Unsurpassed Masters". Yes, 58 CDs of Brian Wilson in the studio, rehearsing his music, hits and obscurities, layer after layer, first the instrumental track (with studio musicians–TBB might be his brothers and friends, but he wasn't going to let anyone mess with his music), and only then the vocals (which The Boys did do). Here's the voices:


Listening to him work in the studio, for me, is akin to watching a video of Michelangelo sketching out and then filling in the Sistine Chapel. The greatest thrill is being able to hear the threads. "Today!" is much influenced by Phil Spector. One big monaural glob of sound, impenetrable, inscrutable and hypnotic. There are those of us who spent many hours scrunching our ears to the hi-fi speaker trying to peek inside, to hear what was going on in there. No way. A wall of sound.

They say Brian is deaf in one ear, which is why he insisted mixing many of his masterpieces in monophonic, so that he could hear the precise sound palette that was being presented to the listener. But apparently in recent years he's figured out (through the fog of sticky goo that remains of what was once his brain) that there's gold in them thar archives. He's allowed himself to be taken back into the studio, and remixed "Pet Sounds" in a beautiful, clear stereo.

Hearing the Unsurpassed Masters of "Kiss Me Baby" was a Rosetta Stone experience for me. Decades of gook removed. You can actually hear that counterpoint line being played by a bass clarinet and ukulele in unison. That's a real example, I promise you. It's a miracle dissected:


If I ever win a lottery, I'm going to try to commission the Copenhagen jazz choir Vocal Line to record this song a cappella. I've already tried to convince both their director and assistant director to do so, succeeding only in convincing them that I have an acute obsessive disorder. Well, they may be right about that. But that's another story. And I think this cut really is uncommonly beautiful.

SOTW 3: Garcia/Grisman, 'So What'

'Crossover' is a turnoff for me. I go for the unadulterated. Single malt whiskey. Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" rather than "Star Wars". Beowulf in the original Old English. Just kidding about that one.

But I do like sharing music that I'm just in the process of discovering, the stuff that's running around my mind when I wake up in the middle of the night. So this week it's 'So What', written by Miles Davis as performed by Jerry Garcia & David Grisman.

It's a classic jazz piece played by a great rock guitarist joining forces with an ex-bluegrass mandolinist, and they've managed to forge a singularly charming little gem.

Jerry Garcia (zt"l) led the Grateful Dead—an eclectic rock jam band and cultural phenomenon. (He was also a prince of a guy. I had the distinct honor of helping host him and the Dead for a weekend.) He eventually branched out into various country & western, bluegrass, 'new acoustic' directions.

David Grisman worked mostly in the 'newgrass' context. That means music with bluegrass instrumentation and texture, but fueled by progressive, jazz-minded improvisation. Bela Fleck is the acknowledged Main Man there. Grisman, with Andy Statman, has even ventured as far afield as newgrass klezmer.


Garcia/Grisman made several CDs together. This one is called "So What", recorded 1992. It's their jazz CD, including 3 pieces associated with Miles and one original.

'So What' is the opening cut of Miles Davis's 1959 "Kind of Blue". It's a unique album. Everyone loves and admires it. Non-jazz people. MORers. Aficionados of elevator music. Effete jazz snobs (although I don't know any of them personally). Critics. Even Deadheads, turns out. Poll any jazzist about the great jazz albums of all time, chances are it'll be #1– unanimously. More of an icon in jazz than the 'underwritten and overproduced' Sgt Pepper in rock. It's really that good. Miles read a theoretical work about modal scales, recruited the young (white) pianist Bill Evans into his black band which included John Coltrane, scheduled 'just another session', and a monolith was created.

The cut here isn't life-changing music, but it sure is sweet and smile-provoking. Heck, it's even got vocal percussion.

SOTW2: Buddy Holly, 'Learning the Game'

This week we're paying a visit to the pantheon.

Buddy Holly's professional career lasted less than two years, cut short by a plane crash in Iowa in February, 1959 (as described by Don McLean in "American Pie"). BH is of the same age, locale and musical background as Elvis. But as Lennon said, "Elvis died in the army." And Buddy Holly lives. His songs have been recorded by a wide range of artists without a break for the past 50 years. His reputation continues to grow.

He's a musician's musician. Keith Richards credits him with inspiring the Stones to create original material. Bruce Springsteen said, "I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on–it keeps me honest!" Paul McCartney made an excellent, adulatory documentary movie about him.

The month before his death, Buddy recorded six songs he had written himself, alone with his acoustic guitar, in his living room. For many years, these were known only in adulterated versions, over-dubbed with a cheap rock-and-roll band and chintzy backing vocals. Included here is the original 'Learning the Game'. All six display a sophistication of personal expression – especially cynical resignation –unheard of in a teenage context in 1959.

Buddy was 22 and a half when he recorded this, and when he died. At that age, John Lennon was recording "Love Me, Do", and Dylan had recorded one album of original material.

But for me, the stories and the loss and the legend are of secondary importance. What really matters is how beautiful and truthful this song is.

SOTW 1: Mint Juleps, 'Don't Let Your Heart'

Let's start with a bang.

Mint Juleps, 'Don't Let Your Heart'.

A cappella, 6 black British chicks (4 of them sisters).

Interesting how there's such a great dance groove, even though there's no percussion (other than the finger-snapping) for the first 2/3 of the song, and no bass part whatsoever! Am I going to become extraneous? Lovely interplay between the lead, the 'too-too-too' arpeggio (my favorite part of the arrangement) and the choral blocks. The group has only about 2 CDs worth of material (1985, 1996). There are a couple of fun Motown chick covers ('Jimmy Mack', 'Da Doo Run Run') a cappella, and a fully produced version of Neil Young's 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' that I like a lot. But 'Don't Let Your Heart' is the memorable cut.

This song was included in a 1990 PBS TV show, Spike Lee & Co: Do It A Cappella.


I apologize to the members of this list to whom I already sent this song a couple of weeks ago. What can you do? I still can't get it out of my head. I'm reading Oliver Sachs' Musicophilia. On p. 309 he quotes Irving J. Massey: "[In contrast with action, character, visual elements and language,] music in dreams is the same as music in our waking life….One might say that music never sleeps…It is as if it were an autonomous system, indifferent to our consciousness or lack of it."